


build this ship to wreck

by extasiswings



Series: enemies of time [6]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, Titanic Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 13:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10617564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: Flynn thinks about icebergs again, icebergs and sinking ships, but while those words crack something inside of him, they don’t hurt.She said the words and he didn’t drown.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the GarcyNetwork's Titanic Week. Needless to say, I took many liberties with the prompt.

It starts mostly as a joke, intended to ease tension when they’re in the middle of an admittedly very bad situation. Not well-timed, perhaps. But then, Lucy’s never claimed to have great comic timing.

(There’s also the fact that nothing’s actually funny when she’s bleeding and even Flynn’s usual impassive mask can’t keep panic from slipping through)

“Stay with me, Lucy,” he commands, holding pressure to the knife wound in her side.

(For once it isn’t Rittenhouse’s fault, but someone who may or may not have been Jack the Ripper. Whether he was or not, he’s dead now, shot by Flynn, his body lying across the room)

“What do I get if I do?” Lucy replies, her head spinning and vision blurring as she struggles to keep her eyes open.

“Anything. Anything you want.” Flynn’s voice is tense, tight, and she blames the blood loss for the fact that she laughs. 

“Anything I want? That’s pretty broad,” she breathes, coughing just afterwards when dust catches in her throat. “Also could be dirty.”

Flynn blinks, the look that passes over his face a mix of incredulity and exasperation, and Lucy congratulates herself on banishing the fear for at least a moment.

“Just saying,” Lucy adds with a shrug, and Flynn ducks his head to briefly kiss her forehead.

“Anything,” he promises. “Just stay alive.”

Lucy curls her fingers in his shirt and leans her head against his chest, wincing when the movement pulls at the wound in her side. But she doesn’t pass out. Not when Wyatt bursts in and the low conversation between him and Flynn swims in and out of her ears, not when they reach the Lifeboat and Rufus blessedly refrains from fussing over her until they’re back in the present, not at all.

(She does throw up over the side of the Lifeboat steps, but she can hardly be blamed for that when the adjustments to fit four people in the machine are fickle bastards at the best of times, let alone when she’s already nauseous)

She needs stitches and a blood transfusion, not to mention antibiotics for the god knows what that was on the knife, but it didn’t hit anything important, so the doctor she sees sends her on her way without too much fuss. 

(She was lucky—they all were—that it wasn’t worse. And by the atmosphere over the next two weeks while her stitches heal, it’s clear they all know it)

She and Flynn don’t talk about it.

* * *

Lucy lasts a week and a half after her stitches come out before she snaps. And it’s all because of Garcia Flynn. 

The thing is, Lucy knows Flynn is an idiot. That’s not a surprise. But she had thought, just maybe, that after months of the two of them sleeping together, he would talk to her instead of avoiding her when he’s running scared.

The most ironic part is that he probably thinks he’s being subtle about it. But he won’t touch her unless he has to, won’t sleep in their bed—and it is their bed at this point—definitely won’t make love to her...he could only be more obvious if he actually came out and told her.

So, she makes a plan.

(Flynn doesn’t want to touch her? Fine. She’ll make due with touching him then)

 _I’m fine_ , Lucy wants to say. _Look at me. Touch me. See? I’m right here._

“Garcia.” She catches him on the stairs after getting ready for bed and he freezes in his tracks. “Come to bed.”

There’s a flash of something across Flynn’s face before he ducks his head. “I—Lucy—”

“I’m not asking,” she replies firmly, reaching for his hand and lacing her fingers through his. 

Flynn doesn’t pull away, but he’s still rooted to the floor. Exhaustion hangs in the lines of his body, and when Lucy looks closer, she can see dark circles under his eyes, but there’s wariness as well. He’s as tense as a horse ready to bolt, as a predator trapped in a corner, and she’s not convinced he won’t lash out if she isn’t careful.

 _Oh, my love_ , she sighs internally. 

Lucy gentles her tone and takes a step closer, her free hand coming up to touch his cheek. 

“Please,” she coaxes. “I don’t sleep as well alone anymore. Come to bed, Garcia.”

He shuts his eyes and for a moment she’s unsure whether he’ll listen or not, but finally he squeezes her hand and nods.

Once they reach their room, Lucy knows she could leave it there—she’s well aware of the battle she just won, even if she didn’t have to do nearly as much as she was prepared to—but she doesn’t.

(She has a plan and she’s damn well going to see the whole thing through. Otherwise, what’s to stop him from running off again in the morning?)

She kisses him instead, first softly, barely even a kiss, and then more insistent, needy, wanting. Flynn returns her kisses, but his hands hang hesitantly in the air by her sides—Lucy huffs in frustration and pushes at his chest until he falls back on the bed before following after him.

She straddles his hips and kisses him again, then catches his hands when they finally move to settle on her waist.

Flynn’s brow furrows as his eyes flick between her hands and her own gaze.

“What?”

“Do you trust me?” Lucy asks, brushing her lips over his knuckles. 

“Always,” he replies, and his voice is steady even if his eyes are wary.

She shifts and pins his hands to the mattress above his head, her eyes not leaving his.

“Lucy…” _What are you doing?_ The unspoken question is clear enough.

“I want—” For the first time since she settled on this course of action, she feels unsteady. “I want to touch you. But I don’t want you to touch me.”

 _Let me show you_ , she thinks. _Let me show you that I’m fine, that I’m here, that I’m not going anywhere._

Flynn’s quiet, his face unreadable. 

“You said I could have anything I wanted,” Lucy reminds, and she sees the indecision flicker across his face as he undoubtedly searches for words to explain that this isn’t exactly what he’d meant without undercutting it completely.

(If nothing else, he’s a man of his word—that much she can count on)

While she waits for him to come up with something, she sets her mouth to his neck, fully intent on leaving a mark. Flynn swallows hard.

“Lucy—”

“Is it so hard to believe I might want to focus on you for once?” Lucy asks, squeezing his hands gently.

“You don’t need to—”

She laughs. “Of course I don’t,” she replies. “This isn’t about feeling obligated, Garcia.”

(No, it’s not about obligation at all. It’s about wanting him to be vulnerable, wanting him to open up to her, showing him that she won’t let him break if he does. She’s not oblivious to the fact that he’s always very attentive to her needs when they’re together like this, and while it’s possible that a lack of reciprocation is selfishness on her part, she thinks it’s more likely that he hasn’t given her the same opportunity to do so. And the reasons for that, well—she may not know every part of his mind, but she knows enough to put the pieces together)

“Please?” Lucy says quietly. “If you really don’t want me to, I won’t. But I’m not going to hurt you, Garcia.” 

_Let me take care of you, love._

Flynn holds her gaze for a long moment, uncertainty and indecision flickering over his face. Just as she’s about to pull back though, sure she must have miscalculated, he squeezes her hands.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Yes, okay.”

Lucy kisses him again, releasing him in favor of slipping her hands under his shirt. As promised, he doesn’t reach for her, just adjusts to assist her when she slides his shirt off over his head.And then she stops. 

It’s funny—she’s seen him with his shirt off several times now, but this is the first instance where she’s taken the time to look in detail, or at least where she hasn’t been distracted before being able to. There are scars scattered across his chest, some fragile spiderwebs, nearly invisible raised lines, others thicker, jagged in a way that suggests serious injury or at least haphazard medical care.

(He has a fighter’s body, hard muscle and scars—and that’s only what’s visible on the outside. She has an Achilles in her bed—beautiful and angry and broken, fighting for something far bigger than himself—and she’s going to put him back together)

Lucy runs her fingers over one of the thin scars, her eyes flicking up to Flynn’s when he goes still.

(She’s not sure he’s breathing, but he’s watching her transfixed, and that focus, all of his attention completely turned to her, is thrilling)

She’s still holding his eyes when she sets her mouth to a twisted, ugly scar that spans two of his ribs. Flynn sucks in a breath as if she’s shocked him, expelling it a moment later in what could be her name or a curse or a prayer or all three when she traces the line of it with her tongue.

After that, Lucy doesn’t stop. She kisses every scar she can find, trying to imagine where they all came from, trying _not_ to think about whether Lorena had ever done this. She leaves a mark over his heart and it feels like a claim, possessive and dark and _mine_ —it feels good enough that she leaves a second just because.

Flynn watches her with shadowed eyes through it all, silent except for the occasional shuddering exhale or murmured words in a language she doesn’t understand.

When she’s done enough—kissed every scar, thoroughly explored him from the waist up—Lucy finally slides down the bed, hooking her thumbs in the waistband of Flynn’s sweatpants and pulling them down his hips. But she doesn’t go straight for her goal either—no, she takes her time there as well, tasting the skin at the hollow of his hip, sliding her hands over his thighs, teasing herself almost as much as him.

“Lucy—” His voice breaks and his hands twist in the sheets and she stops teasing and gives in, taking him in her mouth.

* * *

_Christ, she’s going to kill him._

(But what a way to go)

Flynn closes his eyes as the wet heat of her mouth engulfs him, no longer able to watch, barely able to even breathe, completely overwhelmed with sensation.

Giving her control like this is sweet torture—he’s wrecked, raw, wrung out. He’d watched her kiss his scars and each touch had felt like she was peeling him open to look inside. It was too much, too gentle, too intimate. Too vulnerable. Like dropping a shield and letting your opponent cut you to ribbons, except that Lucy isn’t an enemy, she’s the woman he loves.

(A month ago in 1888 he’d almost lost her, and he can’t get the image of his hands slick with her blood out of his head. Not when blood on his hands is the last memory he has of Lorena. It was too sharp a reminder. Avoiding her was stupid and obvious and he knew she would see right through it, but it was self-preservation in a way, an instinctual response— _run, keep away, it’ll hurt less that way_ —but it hadn’t worked)

_Do you trust me?_

_Always._

(Back when they started this, he’d likened Lucy to the Titanic—beautiful and nearly unshakable—but there are no unsinkable ships, no unbreakable people, and he’s nothing if not a force of destruction. He’d waited for her to stumble on something, some part of him that would be too much, that would break her...but she’d never broken, no matter what she discovered.

Now he thinks he was wrong. She’s not the Titanic, he is. She’d caught him unawares, ripped through his defenses, left him scrambling to make sense of how he’d gotten there.

She’d made him love her)

Flynn stops her before he comes, a breathless _wait_ on his lips, and blessedly, she listens.

“Please,” he pants, forcing his eyes open just enough to catch hers. “I need—”

He reaches for her then, although he doesn’t make contact, just the gesture clear enough to articulate his intention.

(Usually he tells himself he doesn’t need anything, that he may want certain things, but he doesn’t need to ask for those, and the things he wants are often the same things Lucy wants. It’s not as though he ever leaves their encounters feeling unsatisfied. But right now he _needs_ —needs to touch her, needs to be inside her, needs to feel her fall apart, stunning and alive, so he knows that she is)

“Are you back with me?” Lucy asks, and Flynn doesn’t need to ask what she means. 

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

She climbs off the bed briefly to remove her own clothes, but when she returns she takes his hands and guides them over her.

She has a scar now too—fresh as it still is, it stands out against her pale skin. But she doesn’t let him linger over it, instead sliding his hand down between her thighs. 

(This, he can do) 

Lucy doesn’t let him make her come like that though, only letting him bring her to the edge before tugging his hand away and straddling him, sinking down slowly enough that he almost swears. Neither of them last long.

When Flynn comes back to himself, Lucy’s wrapped herself around him— as if she weren’t already a constant grounding force for him, now she’s practically a physical anchor—and he has no desire to move her. Instead, he tips her head up and kisses her softly, a silent _thank you_.

Lucy bites her lip and looks at him thoughtfully, clearly debating something internally. He doesn’t have to wait long to find out what it is.

“I love you.”

Flynn thinks about icebergs again, icebergs and sinking ships, but while those words crack something inside of him, they don’t hurt. 

She said the words and he didn’t drown.

“I love you, too.” 

(He doesn’t drown when he says them either. If anything, he can finally breathe)


End file.
